Berlin

By Jacklyn T. Nadeau

Berlin, first settled in 1822 by William Sessions of Gilead, Maine, began as Maynesborough and was incorporated as the town of Berlin in 1829. The invention of the water turbine allowed early residents to harness the immense power of the Androscoggin River, which bisects the town. The arrival of the railroad in 1852 aided the transport of timber and later paper products, helping to give Berlin the nickname the City that Trees Built. Incorporated as a city in 1897, what began as a small town grew until it was, for a time, the world s largest manufacturer of paper products.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Oct 13, 2008
• ISBN: 9781439620496

Jacklyn T. Nadeau

Jacklyn T. Nadeau is the recording secretary of the Berlin and Co�s County Historical Society and a genealogy researcher. The postcards contained in Berlin were selected from the archives at the historical society�s Moffett House Museum as well as from the private collections of board members.

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INTRODUCTION

Originally granted by the king of England through Colonial governor John Wentworth in 1771 to Sir William Mayne and others, Maynesborough remained unsettled for 50 years. Camps were built along the edge of the Androscoggin River for cutting elm trees to make potash and for hunting, but a permanent homestead was not constructed until around 1823 when William Sessions and his nephew Cyrus Wheeler erected a log cabin and cleared land for a farm. The location of this important site is on the east side of the river in the vicinity of the Maynesborough Industrial Park. Sessions spent most of his life creating farms and selling them, a real estate concept known today as flipping. It was not long before he sold this farm to his brother-in-law Benjamin Thompson. It was known as the Thompson farm for many years after Sessions sold it. The front section of the smaller barn on this site was original to this farm and was built around 1850.

In 1829, the seven families living in Maynesborough petitioned the state for incorporation. The petition was granted, and the town of Berlin was incorporated that same year. Just why this name was chosen has been lost to history, although it was the fashion at the time to use world names; for instance, in Maine, the towns of Paris, Norway, Peru, and Mexico, and others can be found. Some say the decision was influenced by a settler with relatives in Berlin, Connecticut.

The Thompson farm was later bought by Brown Company as a place for its workhorses to recover from injuries and for use as its summer residence in the off season, as logging was primarily done in the winter. In 1947, the larger barn was moved next to the smaller barn from the other side of Horne Brook behind what is now White Mountain Chalet. This barn was part of the Maynesborough farm, an Arabian horse–stud farm owned by William Robinson Brown, a co-owner of Brown Company. He and his family summered here from their home at 250 Church Street in Berlin, which still stands. When it was no longer used by the company, the house at Thompson farm was burned as part of a training drill by the Berlin Fire Department in the early 1970s. These two barns, along with about three acres of land, are now owned by the Berlin and Coös County Historical Society.

The sudden, rapid growth of Berlin can be traced directly to the power held in the Androscoggin River that bisects the city. Such was the power of the river that its full potential was not realized until the advent of the turbine. Waterwheels would not survive the spring freshets. The coming of the railroad in 1853 also brought with it out-of-town investors. Hezekiah Winslow and his partners from Portland erected a sawmill at the northern end of Berlin on the west bank of the Androscoggin River where Northern Forest Heritage Park now stands. That year, they also built a boardinghouse across the street from the sawmill to house workers and a company store. This house still stands and is the oldest residence in Berlin, now known as the Brown Company House. For many years in the 20th century, it was the home of the superintendent of the Brown Company Mills in Berlin and Gorham.

The name of the sawmill was changed from Winslow Mill to Berlin Mills in 1866, after Winslow sold his share. In 1868, William Wentworth Brown of Portland became a partner in this mill. He established a head office in Portland and a wharf there for shipping the lumber. Brown bought controlling interest in the mill in 1888 and sent his son Herbert J. Brown to Berlin as superintendent. He was the first of the Brown sons to live in Berlin, which was something his father never did, choosing instead to oversee the business from Portland. Herbert J.’s house, next to his brother William Robinson’s, still stands.

Although the sawmill was large by any standard, it was pulp that built Berlin to new heights. In 1877, Henry Hart Furbish established the first pulp mill in Berlin, the Forest Fibre Company. He is considered the true father of Berlin. It remained for less than 20 years and was overshadowed by the Burgess Sulphite Mill, as the sulphur process introduced by the Brown family superseded the soda process employed by Furbish. With the addition of the Riverside Pulp Mill, Electrochemical Plant, Tube Mill, expansion at Cascade in Gorham and LaTuque in the province of Quebec in Canada, Brown Company became a world force as the Brown Corporation. In the 1920s, the largest papermaking complex in the world was in Berlin and Gorham. Orton Bishop Brown, who was put in charge of the mills in Berlin and Gorham by his father, William Wentworth, had a beautiful large house complete with a ballroom and a grand staircase on the corner of Church Street and Hillside Avenue. It was torn down in the early 1970s. Elderly housing now stands in its place.

The Browns were certainly a major influence in the community as they and their families took an active interest in Berlin’s citizens, their work force. Whatever improved the family helped their workers, whose nationalities included Syrian, Italian, German, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, and, foremost among these, French-Canadian. The Brown family hired visiting nurses, established the first kindergarten, and donated books written in Norwegian for